Bryce Covert

On Election Day, voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will decide whether to close loopholes in their state constitutions allowing the forced labor of incarcerated people.

Personal narratives can help the public understand the benefits of bail reform, but telling these success stories presents its own share of challenges.

In the raucous debate over bail reform, simple facts have fallen out of sight.

After the state rolled back a progressive bail law, data from the Vera Institute of Justice suggests judges are ordering more people be held in jails, amid continued worry over COVID-19.

Only 7 percent of tenants in the state have legal representation in eviction proceedings. A bill in the Connecticut house is trying to change that.

The governor has rolled back eviction protections for those struggling most to pay rent.

KC Tenants has secured passage of a tenant “bill of rights” and successfully blocked hundreds of evictions through civil action in the Kansas City, Missouri area.

After organizing to repeal the “walking while trans” ban, advocates in the state—and around the country—are looking ahead to the next fight.

Tenants rights groups in Brooklyn, Kansas City, New Orleans, and elsewhere are using physical blockades and direct action to keep people in their homes.

Organizations in New York City have stepped in to help families with funeral costs and related matters in communities hit hard by the disease, but their money and resources are strained.

The lawsuit says the Small Business Administration overstepped its authority by imposing ‘arbitrary and capricious’ restrictions on a loan program passed by Congress.

State Assembly members, senators, and city council members have said they will decline and donate funds from police and corrections officers as New Yorkers fill the streets to protest recent violence by law enforcement.

The governor’s requirements for release are too narrow in light of the threat from COVID-19, they say.

Their proposals move beyond Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 90-day eviction moratorium and call for suspending or forgiving rent payments longer term.

The state, which accounts for roughly one-third of all positive COVID-19 cases in the country, is facing a rapid spread of the disease in its jail and prison systems.

Andrew Cuomo, who recently announced the state would employ prisoners to make hand sanitizer, must prepare for the particular vulnerabilities of the state’s prison population to COVID-19, advocates say.

Advocates, formerly incarcerated people, and lawmakers warned against overhauling the New York law before it has a chance to prove itself.

Despite dire-sounding headlines, the state’s cash bail reforms are having a positive impact on the people they are meant to help.

In 2017, the Manhattan district attorney pledged not to pursue criminal charges for subway fare evasion. Now the MTA is increasing the system’s police presence.

Krasner’s office acknowledges ‘there’s room to move forward and do more.’

Many jurisdictions across the country use video instead of holding bail hearings in person, a practice that often leads to dire consequences.

The bail bonds industry was caught overcharging 50,000 families $6 million over 14 years, according to SPLC.

As they await statewide action to eliminate cash bail, city councilmembers are looking for ways to reduce the financial burden on families of incarcerated people.

No Cook County judge has lost a retention election in 28 years.

Judges are still setting bail at unaffordable levels, and more people are being held without bond.

As media attention wanes, “this is the most dangerous period with any prisoner action,” one organizer said.

Ronald Brooks was helping plan a prison strike when he was abruptly transferred to a new prison hours away.

The criminal court was funneling millions of dollars a year from poor communities.

News of the victory is spreading rapidly to other cities.

Prosecutors and judges across the country are starting to feel eyes on them.

People incarcerated at Angola want opportunities for education instead of hard labor in the fields.

Houston has come up with a new way to make life harder for people leaving prison on parole: by forcing the programs that provide them with housing, often paired with job placement and other services, to move outside the city limits. At the end of March, the city council approved an ordinance that imposes new regulations and […]

“It’s illegal to stand still, it’s illegal to sit down, it’s illegal to lay down, it’s illegal to eat,” said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “You’re breaking the law as soon as you stop walking.”

As part of a growing push to end the use of cash bail, a national movement is calling attention to the plight of defendants held in jail simply because they can’t afford to pay their way out.

In early February, the Philadelphia City Council made history: It voted unanimously in favor of ending the use of cash bail. The resolution, passed February 1, urges the district attorney’s office and the courts “to institute internal policies that reduce reliance on cash bail” and called on the state legislature and state Supreme Court to eliminate […]

Prisoners in Florida are in the midst of a huge and risky protest: They started a strike and boycott on Martin Luther King Jr. Day meant to last through the month. The protest challenges exorbitant prices at canteens; urges Florida to extend parole, as an incentive for good behavior, to all prisoners; and demands payment […]

Alaska’s new comprehensive criminal justice reform law will reduce the prison population by 13% and save taxpayers $380 million.

Bail has been operating differently in Harris County, Texas, lately. In April, a judge issued an injunction in response to a lawsuit filed against the county by nonprofits Civil Rights Corps and Texas Fair Defense Project and law firm Susman Godfrey alleging that its practice of jailing people who couldn’t pay bail was unconstitutional. Under […]

New Jersey has become a national leader in criminal justice reform, particularly around the hot button issue of requiring cash bail. When it passed the Bail Reform and Speedy Trial Act last year, it became one of only three locations in the United States that have virtually eliminated bail as a condition for release when someone is charged with a crime. Yet the state literally stumbled into these efforts, almost by accident, in 2012.